


Dinitrogen Monoxide

by Dabberdees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, It was for the How are you not dead? prompt from the thirteenfanzine a few weeks back, Unintentional drug use, angst and then fluff, i found this in my google docs, is still drug use even if they didn't know, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dabberdees/pseuds/Dabberdees
Summary: The Doctor breaks when she thinks she lead the three people she cares about to their deaths, only it's not as clear as she first thought.For the "How are you not dead?" Prompt from a few weeks back.





	Dinitrogen Monoxide

“Doctor, you can’t fix this from here!” argues the Eevon scientist, his name lost and not her top priority to learn or remember at the moment. “The room and ship have gone into deadlock seal, you and we can’t escape from here, we’re safe.”

The Doctor spins and faces him, hands still moving across the panel at the door in vain. “I have to try! You said the ship is about to be flooded with toxic gas,” She shoots back at him. “My friends are in danger, I need to shut the reactor down and stop it, and I can’t do it from in here.”

The Eevon man closes his eyes, his body sagging in defeat. “We can’t… it… we can’t. I’m sorry, we’re safe in here… and I can’t let the people in this room die for the few Humans stuck outside. I’m sorry, Doctor, but I have my people to think about.”

“Let me out then!” she shouts back, and to the credit of the Eevon scientist, he doesn’t back down from the fury of a Time Lord. “Let. Me. Out. If they are to die, then I want to die with them.”

“No, Doctor, even if I could, I wouldn’t. There are children in here! I won’t put them in danger by helping you open a door that can’t be opened. I am sorry, but the ship and systems were built to activate and go into a deadlock if the reactor was to ever overload, there is nothing we can do for your friends outside.”

“There has-”

“There is nothing Doctor! The ship was designed to vent the toxic build-up of fumes from the reactor into the ship and away from the bunkers inside. Only then will it get vented into space. I’m sorry, I truly arm, but there is nothing we can do.” He shouts, hand shaking in shame.

She leans against the doorframe, breathing hard and glaring at the floor, only rearing back to lash out at it. Her fist hitting it in anger repeatedly and becoming bruised. “They were under my protection and I-” She cuts herself off, voice breaking. She turns away from the door and the scientist, heading over to a computer that has access to the intercom. “Fam?”

There’s static across the intercom, and she goes to speak again, but a crackle rings out to the room. “Doctor?” Yaz asks, voice filled with worry. “We’re stuck-” She trails off, voice distant and the Doctor hears two others speaking to her. “-Ryan and Graham are trying to get the door open, but they can’t.”

“Where are you exactly?”

Another pause. “We’re stuck in a corridor, we were going back to the TARDIS like you said, but the doors slammed shut in both directions, and we never made it back.”

She doesn’t press the button for this as she turns to the Eevon. “Will they be protected in the corridor?”

The Eevon swallows, he might look human, but she knows he isn’t by the blue flush across his face. “They won’t Doctor, the fumes will be released into the ship, and then they will be vented to space, only leaving the pure air behind.”

She leans down against the console again, considering how to tell her friends that there will be no miracle rescues this time, no last minute hail mary that she’ll pull out from nowhere, and that she lead them all to their deaths, like Clara, Bill, and the many before them. “How quickly will they die?” She feels sick for asking a question like that, but she needs to know, needs to know how long they will suffer for.

“I don’t know Human physiology but for an Eevon to breath in the toxic air that is about to be vented from the reactor-” He swallows again. “-Twenty or so minutes but they will pass out long before that though, they won’t know anything, Doctor, it’ll be like going to sleep for them.”

“How long does the venting last for?”

“Forty minutes.” She grinds her jaw, hands clenching in anger at the galaxy and its cruelty.

“Hey, Doc, you cut off, you alright, where you are?” Graham asks now. “Doors are completely locked, Ryan and me tried everything but they ain’t budging.”

The Doctor looks down at the blinking red light and presses it. “Sit tight Fam, the reactor is going to vent, but you’ll be safe in the corridor, just sit tight.” She lies comfortably to them. “We can go and see Elvis if you want Graham, was always meaning to take you back to see him.”

“Nah, that’s fine Doc, you showed us some pretty great things to be fair, Elvis pales in comparison,” Graham says over the intercom. “I’ll rather do what the others want, and I’m easy.”

“Is there a space Elvis, Doctor?” wonders the voice of Ryan. “That would be better to see, cause I don’t really want to go back to that time if I’m honest, and gramps, you deserve to do what you want now and then.”

The universe truly is going to do this to her. Torment her and give her the pleasure to hear their last moments before she loses them for good. Graham and Ryan, just connected and building a bond together… and Yaz, beautiful Yaz, so young and ambitious and… she’s going to be gone like the boys.

“Sit tight guys,” the Doctor says, her hand holding the button down for a moment longer than needed before finally letting it go… letting them go. She chokes back a sob, hand coming up and resting against her eyes.

“Sure thing, Doc, don’t be too-” Graham’s voice cuts off in a crackle.

She slams the button down again, eyes frantically staring at it. “Graham?” She didn’t want to hear them die, but she would rather listen to them than have them cut off like that. The Doctor snaps her eyes to the Eevon again. “What happened?”

“The reactor is venting; power will be taken from lesser systems during it, that includes the intercoms, Doctor, they won’t be back on until the vent is complete.”

She nods, legs weak now as she turns and slides down the console she was using to support herself, lowering her head to her chest. “I’m sorry Fam… but I will take you back, to your families, they will have closure, unlike the others before you.”

 

“The Doc got cut off,” Graham says with a frown. “But she said we’ll be fine.” He looks at Ryan and Yaz and offers them a smile when he sees the concern on their faces. “She’ll get us out of this, she always does.” He reassures them before turning and sitting down on the floor.

Ryan and Yaz glance at each other and join him on the floor. “You sure we’ll be safe?” Ryan inquires with worry.

Graham shrugs at him. “The Doc said we would be, trust in her cause she ain’t done us wrong yet, ain’t that right Yaz?”

Yaz snaps out of her thoughts and looks to him, nodding after a moment. “Yeah, she’ll get us out.”

Graham smiles at them again, but his eyes drift to the intercom, and there’s an unease sitting within him… something isn’t right, but he won’t tell that to the kids, the tone in the Doctor’s voice was different. He’s old enough to understand now, that voice that tries to divert kids attention from something horrible about to happen. Might work on Ryan and Yaz, even though they aren’t strictly kids, but he’s older, and he’s seen the world. He’s used that voice on the buses when he had to do the school runs, and something happened. “You two hungry cause I got stuff on me,” mumbles Graham, reaching into his jacket and throwing a chocolate bar to Ryan and Yaz. He pulls out his own and opens it.

Ryan frowns and pulls a face at him. “How many do you have on you?”

“He’s got a point, Graham, just what do you actually have in that jacket?”

Graham smirks at them, trying to hide the growing panic in him and bites into his bar, avoiding answering the question and trying to mask his feelings. He pauses when he hears a snap-hiss, and a sickening feeling hits him instantly. That confirms what he expected then, what the Doctor was trying to hide from them. He looks to Ryan and Yaz, breathing a sigh of relief when neither one of them pick up on the sound. “Come here, you two, we’re Fam, we stay together, alright.” _And we die together; he_ doesn’t add. Funnily enough, he expected the gas to be choking and toxic… not sweet… and annoyingly familiar….

* * *

 

The Doctor paces against the door like a lion in a zoo, eyes wildly looking around the room and waiting for the forty minutes to be up. As soon as the doors swish open, she exits, feet carrying her to the last known position that her friends… her Fam was in, and she has to hope that any of them have survived, hope that for once, she’s not going to lose again.

There are footsteps behind her, and she turns ever so slightly to see who is keeping up with her, spotting three Eevons from the room. The scientist and two others, a man and a woman. She doesn’t care for their names.

She skids to a stop at the corridor, a pit of dread within her stomach as she waits for the door to open for her and she growls when it doesn’t, angry eyes snapping to the Eevons. “Why isn’t it opening?”

The scientist from before answers “You need a key card which I have Doctor.” He brushes past her and slots the card in place. It beeps, and the door opens antagonising slowly.

The Doctor wastes no time in entering, her eyes travelling down the corridor to three figures on the floor… and are they laughing? The Eevons come in behind her, and she glances back at them.

“That’s impossible!” The woman says. “They should be dead, how are they not dead!?”

Graham, upon hearing her voice, turns his head to look at them. “Hey, Ryan, Yaz, look, it’s the Doc!” He stands unsteadily and points at her accusingly. “You lied to me, lied to us!” The tone in his voice catches her off guard. If there was anger in it, she could’ve dealt with perhaps but… that slightly intoxicated tone, not so much.

“Graham?” The Doctor mumbles, feet ploughing her forward. That’s puzzling, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. She looks to Ryan and Yaz, both staring at her with disoriented expressions.

“You’re all alive-” She reaches them, and without warning she grabs each of them into a hug, her hands holding onto each of their faces and staring intently at them all, just to make sure they’re alright and alive. Dazed, but alive! “Never do that again!” She half yells at them.

Graham frowns and bats her hands away from his face. “You lied,” Graham says again and this time she hears the slurred tone but there meaning is behind it. “Gas wasn’t toxic just-” He squeezes his eyes shut. “When I’m sober, we’re talking ‘bout this, Doc.” He says in a jumble.

Ryan nods along to Graham while blinking his eyes and not focusing on anything in particular. “It smelt and tasted sweet.”

Yaz wonders forward, befuddled eyes staring intently at the Doctor. “Doctor, you look stressed and scared.” She says coming round to her sense a bit more than Graham is. “What happened?”

The Doctor frowns between them all and pulls out her sonic, raising it and scanning each of them with her eyes widening when she realises what they’d breathed in. “Nitrous Oxide.” She spins and points a finger at the Eevon scientist. “They breathed in Nitrous Oxide! They were never in any danger, well… not for long anyway.” She exhales. “I never asked what the gas was! Stupid, Doctor, caught up with panic and not thinking clearly.”

“I don’t understand how they aren’t dead-”

The Doctor shakes her head, the fear, terror and panic swimming just under her skin but now fading. “They’re Human, Nitrous Oxide isn’t completely harmless to them, but they can breath it in for a while.”

“They’re alright, then?” The Eevon scientist asks. “Amazing, the data that this could-”

“No.” The Doctor says, eyes dangerously staring at the scientist. “They are coming back with me.” The Doctor states now looking back at them and sighing. “They’re fine but the come down is going to be… troublesome.” Each of her Fam stares back at her, smirking dumbly.

“Come down?”

“They’re high." She says one hand rubbing her brow, the other on her hip. "Nitrous oxide, also known as dinitrogen oxide, dinitrogen monoxide or more commonly on Earth. Laughing Gas…" She turns to the three Eevons. "It’s a drug to them. They use it to treat pain.”

“To treat pain?” The Eevon woman mutters. "How could something so toxic be used to treat pain?"

Graham points at her again. “That it is… I figured out what it was after-” He stares at his hands, face creasing in thought as he counts his fingers. “-I don’t know, but I realised, and you lied, don’t lie. Doctor’s shouldn’t lie, cause if they did then people wouldn’t know what was wrong with them...” He gestures to Ryan and Yaz, seeing if they are following along with him and looking disappointed when neither show they are. "I had it before," Graham says without care.

"Before?" Ryan asks. "When? Cause I know, they use other pain stuff, or you had other stuff when nan treated you."

Graham widens his eyes. "Before-" There's a panicked look to them like he's been caught out. He flicks his eyes to Yaz, and she catches them, her own eyes widening.

"Graham!" She scolds. "Oh, oh... Ryan, I could, in theory, arrest your grandad!"

Ryan's brain finally catches up to the conversation. "Oh, you've just made doing that very uncool." He smirks at him. "Did my nan know? Cause she would've murdered me if she caught me doing that and to think you did it."

Graham now glares at Ryan. "I'm cool-" He points a finger at his grandson. "-And it was years ago. I wasn't always an old man; you know that, right? I was once your age, oh the stories I could tell, son. "

"Maybe another time gramps cause I don’t know about anyone else, but all I wanna do right now is sleep,” Ryan says with a stretch. “For like a month.”

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea.” Yaz agrees with him. "Sleeping and then we can dig into Graham's criminal past."

"I'm not a criminal!"

The Doctor stares back at all of them, fear bleeding away as they bicker with each other, and she can feel the stress relieving itself in tears. “Never do that again; all three of you.” She says, grabbing them all into a group hug, breathing them in and… convincing herself that they’re alive and safe and not currently dead. “Never again-" She lets them go. "Now you lot, we’re going back to the TARDIS where you can sleep this off, no arguments Graham.” She says spotting the older man frowning at her.

“I’m not a child that you put to bed, Doc,” Graham sulks.

The Doctor doesn’t reply as she gently herds them towards the TARDIS, and back into relative safety.


End file.
